Ghalib:

[1867, to Ahmad Hasan Qannauji:] {180,7}: I'm sixty-five years old. Decline in strength,
weakness of intellect, thoughts of death, grief of the end. I'm now no longer
as you've seen me. The work [kaam] of poetry and prose
goes on simply through the force of fifty years of practice [mashq];
otherwise, where is the brilliance of the true temper of thought [jauhar-e
fikr ki ra;xshandagii]? An old wrestler describes the holds, but can't
exert the force. Anyway, convey my salaam to the Hakim Sahib, and tell him
that he should regularly send his poetry, with no formality. After I have
given correction, it will
regularly be returned to him.

[In an essay read at the Delhi Society, and in conversations
with friends in the 1860's, Ghalib quoted the verse in the changed form [with .zu((f instead of ((ishq]. When
one friend asked him about the change, he replied, 'The word ((ishq
was connected with that time. Now I am ashamed of the word.'] (337)

FWP:

The first line gives us nikammaa ,
and of course we recognize it as meaning generally 'worthless'. But still,
there are many directions in which the second line could go, with many kinds
of misery, suffering, and debility that could be adduced as examples.

In good mushairah
performance style, we have to wait for further revelation until we hear the
second line. And even then, the second line withholds its punch-word until
the last possible moment: kaam . Only then do we realize
that the opposition between kaam and its derivative
opposite, nikammaa , is at the heart of the verse. The
word nikammaa points us to the most common meaning of
kaam : something like 'action, act, deed, work, doing,
handiwork, performance; work, labour, duty, task, job'. Ghalib's own use of
the verse in letters also points us in that same general direction.

But the position of kaam as a 'punch-word'
invites us to give it particular attention, and then of course we recall its
double meaning: it also has, through both Persian and Sanskrit, a powerful
range of 'desire'-related meanings: 'inclination, wish, desire, longing, inordinate
desire; affection, love, passion; sexual passion; lust'. (For more discussion
of these double meanings, see {22,6}.)

Moreover, both these meanings of kaam are explicitly 'activated' within the verse: the meaning 'work' is activated by the opposition to nikammaa , and the meaning 'desire' is activated by the explanatory invocation of ((ishq . For more on such 'double activation', see {120,3}.

The first reading
enjoyably emphasizes the opposition-- and the connection-- between usefulness
and uselessness; in the first line, it focuses our attention on nikammaa
. But the second reading emphatically reminds the audience that it was 'passion'
itself that wrecked the lover-- in the first line, it focuses our attention on ((ishq
. For 'otherwise', before we became useless, we were a person full of 'desire'
and 'longing' and even 'passion'. It was passion, in short,
that made the lover useless-- and thus incapable of passion.